Official Report 759KB pdf
The next item on our agenda is a further evidence session as part of our inquiry into female participation in sport and physical activity. Today, we will focus on inequalities and the additional barriers to participation in sport that are faced by women and girls from marginalised communities and those experiencing physical and mental health challenges.
I welcome Ewelina Chin, chief executive officer of HSTAR Scotland, which is a member of BEMIS; Lynne Glen, pathways manager at Scottish Disability Sport; Baz Moffat, CEO and co-founder of The Well HQ; Robert Nesbitt, head of physical activity and sport at the Scottish Association for Mental Health; and Heidi Vistisen, policy manager at LEAP Sports Scotland.
We will move straight to questions and we will start with Gillian Mackay.
What actions could be taken to better enable women and girls with disabilities to take part in sport and physical activity? I ask Lynne Glen to respond first, if that is okay.
It is about hearing the voices of the young girls. We have a great leadership programme—we work in partnership with SAMH on that—and it is about listening to the girls and hearing their voices. It is also about ensuring that any images across Scotland that represent physical activity and sport explicitly include them. The message that the young girls are giving us is that, if they do not see people like them or images of women with disabilities doing physical activity and playing sport, it is not relatable and they do not think that it is for them. There is then the whole issue of body awareness and body imaging.
We need to get to a place where we listen, hear the voices of young people and use more imagery and more explicit language around encouraging young females to participate in physical activity and sport. It is about working in partnership with other agencies to spread the word and encourage more young girls. That goes from the local level, with local authorities and trusts, to the governing bodies at the national level and other third sector partners, some of which are on this panel.
On the point about images, I suppose that we also need to remember that not all disabilities are visible and that they affect different people who play different sports in different ways. I say that as someone with a vestibular-related disability. It is absolutely important that we consider people with different physical impairments, but how can we also get those less-seen impairments out there? They can also affect people’s participation in sport throughout their lives.
Absolutely. It is about working in partnership, and we have to reach wider. That is the challenge: getting the message out more widely to more people. We are doing a lot of work with others. We have a national visual impairment support group and we work with the sight loss societies that support people on the ground. Those connections are important. It is about connecting with the agencies on the ground that work locally with people, because that extra support is needed to get young girls involved in physical activity and sport.
For me, it is about working with the third sector agencies and with health and education, which are the two places where almost everybody will access services. We need to keep on getting the messaging out and being clear about our key message that sport and physical activity are for everyone, and we need to encourage more people to get involved. Does that make sense?
Yes, absolutely. I think that Robert Nesbitt wants to comment.
I want to highlight the work on which we have engaged with Scottish Disability Sport. It goes back to the points that Lynne Glen made about role models and about us telling those stories and enabling people to hear them.
In our work around mental health and disabilities, we focused on hearing what people were telling us about that. We worked alongside them in one of the programmes that Scottish Disability Sport runs—the young start programme—where they focus on mental health.
Mental health was a huge barrier and a huge issue that was often hidden for people with disabilities. From that work in partnership, and the voices of those young people, we were able to identify what those areas were and design programmes and education around those particular areas. That really helped to shine a light and bring greater understanding, again going back to the point that you were making, allowing people to see themselves in that space and allowing other people to understand what that means. That creates a space for greater participation in sport and physical activity.
I have two other points. One is around education and training. We deliver inclusion training in every tertiary institution across Scotland. It is a really fragile programme, because it is funded independently; we access the money to deliver that programme free to the universities. That programme means that every physical education teacher and classroom teacher is being trained to offer inclusive opportunities within school.
The second point is that we have the governing body for boccia, as well, and we have a girls-only programme to encourage more girls to play boccia. We are now working in partnership with more governing bodies that are recognising that, unless you build it in, they will not come. We need to have proactive interventions for young girls to participate, including girls-only programmes where appropriate.
Are we doing that work well, in terms of joining up the physical health aspect with mental health and other issues? Is that cross-organisation approach working and are we recognising that individuals will have varying impacts from different parts of their life? Or are there areas where we can do better?
We have some really good examples of where we are engaging with young women and women with disabilities and people who are able bodied. We are listening to those voices and focusing on designing programmes that are designed by young women for young women or by young people with disabilities, including young women, for other people with disabilities, so that that grows. We are taking really strong steps towards that. Of course we can do more, and of course we can continue to look at what the research is telling us, what the voices of individuals are telling us, and then design the right programmes.
Lynne Glen highlighted the issue of funding. We continually look at funding and at the way in which we can create opportunities within that funding. Some of the challenge for programmes is the short-term nature of that funding. We continue to advocate for longer-term funding to allow us to reach people and engage, and to ensure that we are creating a real participation pathway to enable young women and women to be involved in physical activity and sport.
Looking at a person-centred approach and giving women the opportunity to raise their voices and share their experiences is very important, but we also believe that education is vital for those who respond to those voices. Very often, through the decades, we have been in a position where we heard the voices but nothing appropriate happened after that. It was not because people were not willing to do something, but there was a lack of understanding and follow-up to the inquiry to provide the right action.
HSTAR works with many women from ethnic minorities, and I believe that, when we look at disability—not just physical disability but focusing on mental health and wellbeing—we need to realise that that background adds a kind of complexity. Having mental health problems, issues and struggles will be different for the Afghan community, or for the Ukrainian community, through their religion, their beliefs and the way in which their bodies respond, and we should be very well informed in Scotland. It is a beautiful place of great diversity, so the knowledge needs to be there.
I thank the witnesses for being here. I will touch on the examples that Robert Nesbitt talked about of working with people to design spaces, which I am interested in hearing more about. Training and education can take us so far, but to have walked in someone’s shoes is entirely different and can tackle poor design and inaccessible infrastructure. Do you have examples of projects where people have been involved in co-design and that has increased the numbers who use and access spaces?
10:45
I will highlight two strong areas. For the past two years, SAMH has been developing a young women in sport leadership programme to look at the importance of leadership and mental health in that space. We have worked with a group of young women who have become an expert panel for us and designed a programme that addresses the barriers and issues that young women face in sport leadership and leadership as a whole.
We involved 74 young women in a survey to give us rich data that helped us to focus the programme. The big area that we recognised coming through was that levels of self-belief, self-confidence and self-worth were strong barriers that were impacting and influencing young women’s engagement in leadership.
We can look at the problem that we are trying to solve. In one of its reports, Scottish Women in Sport identified that the gap between men in leadership and women in leadership was widening, which we want to tackle.
Alongside my team and a variety of partners, the young women have helped to design a programme that embeds leadership and mental health together. I am proud to say that we will launch that shortly and that it will involve the whole of Scotland—including the islands, rural areas and the central belt—to bring young women together.
That is a real example of the voice of young women shaping and helping us to drive a programme. Over the next year, young women will tackle the question of having self-confidence, self-worth and self-belief.
Another big area for us is women in menopause, which we launched our report on with the University of Edinburgh at the beginning of May. More than 600 women shared their experience of menopause—of its impact on their mental health and its influence on their engagement in physical activity and sport. As a result of that research and our findings, we have put nine recommendations out there for people to see.
We are working with partners to bring those recommendations to life—we are speaking with the Government and individuals to shape and influence practice, particularly on things such as menopause-friendly groups, activities and resources. We have an expert group of women who have experienced menopause and they will shape, design and develop resources for women who are experiencing mental health and menopause issues, which will help to influence and shape the practice that is out there across communities.
Those are a couple of examples of where we are targeting such work, which is based on research and on the voice of women, including young women and women who are experiencing menopause. That will make a difference in communities.
We accessed UK-wide project funding from the Robertson Trust to put in place the Lady GOGA—get out, get active—pilot. In Scotland, we are not quite there with people understanding that rates of participation in physical activity and sport are lower for females and among ethnically diverse communities such as south Asians.
The Lady GOGA project gave us a bit of resource. It took an intense approach. The outcome was that in the Forth Valley area, the ratio went from one in three to one in two. That demonstrated to us that having a specific project targeted at females can encourage more females to take part.
The group of women from Forth Valley Disability Sport who were on the panel were then able to shape that programme and say, “These are the activities that we want.” That comes back to the design of the activities and the women saying what they want. The positive outcome there was the increased participation of females.
I am conscious that we have not heard from Baz Moffat or Heidi Vistisen. Do either of you want to contribute anything to the questions that have been asked so far?
I am happy to go first; I was just waiting to see whether Baz Moffat was coming in online. I will go back to what was said about access to facilities. I am trying to make sure that I do not lose my train of thought here; you pulled me when I was not ready.
We were talking about data, knowing who is participating and understanding that there are groups of people that we are not aware of and do not know what the levels of their participation are. We see that issue across the work that we do with LGBTIQ people, and specifically with lesbian, bisexual and trans women in sport. We have some data, a lot of which comes from third sector organisations and partners from across Europe and the rest of the UK.
However, we do not know what is happening across different sports unless those individual sports ask those questions and ask for that data. There is no centralised system where we can find out the levels of athletes or participants who have a mental health impairment, who might be LGBTIQ or who might have a physical disability or anything else.
We recommend that the inquiry considers that point. I will leave it there and see whether Baz wants to come in.
I want to focus on the educational aspect that we have been talking about. We have been doing some work with CIMSPA, and for those of you who do not know what that is, it is the Chartered Institute of the Management of Sport and Physical Activity. It is a UK-wide organisation that is responsible for setting the standards from which qualifications can be written, whether those are Business and Technology Education Council qualifications, fitness qualifications or sports coach education. However, there has not been anything in the female health space—the only standard that has existed is in the prenatal and postnatal space—so all those courses on menopause or training teenagers have no standard to adhere to. There has been a real issue around the quality of some of those qualifications.
In addition to that, there is no standard level of education on female health in anything. A physical education teacher, a fitness instructor, a swimming coach, a rugby coach or a running coach will have no education on female health appropriate to their level of education as standard. You can go off and do a specialist course, but you will not know whether it is a good or bad course because there are no standards.
This summer we have written the girls and women standard with CIMSPA. It has been out for public consultation and we have had input from lots of brilliant agencies working in the space. The standard will be published over the summer, which means that whenever anyone wants to produce a new coaching course or qualification, they have a standard from which they can work out what they need to include or not. That is absolutely essential.
We can encourage people and do all the positive stuff around advertising, health promotion and engaging females better, but until we have a workforce that is educated about females, we will not have created a system in which females feel that they truly belong, whether they are females with disabilities or females from different cultures and backgrounds.
Until we educate the people who look after girls about female health—covering all the life stages from puberty, to prenatal and postnatal to menopause, including issues such as periods, bras, pelvic health and the increased risk of injury—and implement that into our coaching education, it will not matter how much we promote sport in order to get girls in, we will still see a gender gap in female participation and performance.
Thanks, Baz. That leads us on to our next theme, which I hope that Heidi Vistisen will come in on.
I have one question, but first I want to follow up on what Baz Moffat just said. I am going through the coaching qualification and I can see that I will have to do child protection, anti-doping and first aid as mandatory modules. Are you suggesting that in addition to those three, there could be a fourth module on women and girls?
Absolutely. However, I also feel that it is on the same continuum as welfare and safeguarding. We have just come from a sports lawyers conference and there were so many representatives from safeguarding from lots of different national sports governing bodies. They had a moment when the penny dropped and they realised that if they get female health wrong, it becomes a safeguarding issue. It can often be presented as a conflict: if we put female health in, what needs to come out? However, if we consider it as part of wellbeing and safeguarding, we will not be competing for space on coaching courses but will be saying that it is something that needs to be integrated into training.
Thank you for that answer.
On a separate topic, we went out to talk to women and girls who do sports, and one issue that they raised was the colour of their sports kits. We know that sport is good for physical health, but they talked about mental health and the huge anxiety that they feel when their periods are coming—not just when they are on their period, but those times when they do not know when it will come. That stops girls doing sport. However, some organisations do not see it as an issue and it is not spoken about. What further steps could be taken to minimise the impact of periods on participation in sport and physical activity?
We should broaden that point, because it affects not just the girls who compete in sport but the umpires, the referees and the middle-aged women, who are often expected to wear white shorts or skirts, or light-coloured clothing. As we know, when a woman enters perimenopause, their periods can become really erratic. We are losing coaches and supporters of younger women being active, too, purely because of what we are asking them to wear.
Fixing the issue is what I would consider to be low-hanging fruit—whether it is light-coloured shorts or whatever the bottom half of someone’s kit is, it could easily be changed. We need to be far less prescriptive in what we expect young people and other people involved in sport to wear. We need to give everyone options so that they feel genuinely comfortable participating in sport, whatever their role. That is a really easy win.
However, it is not enough. Often people will say, “Oh, we’ve changed the colour of our kit from white to blue, so we’ve done female health.” I know that, in Scotland, you do a brilliant job of ensuring that sanitary products are freely available in public places, but we need to ensure that wherever girls are moving, they have really easy access to free sanitary products without having to ask anyone, unlock a locker or have a conversation about it.
The other thing that we can do is educate girls and the people who support them about how important the menstrual cycle is and that it is a vital sign of women’s health: if you have a regular menstrual cycle, that is your body’s way of saying, “Brilliant—you are doing a fantastic job, eating enough food and being active. Your body is in balance and is coping with the stress and strain that you are putting on it.”
It is not only a question of educating girls about what is healthy. Thirty per cent of women experience heavy menstrual bleeding. Some women have problematic periods, when their symptoms really affect their ability to engage in life, whether that is education, sport or music. There are lots of tools available to help them to manage their problematic period or their symptoms, and we should use those, rather than just sending them to the GP to be put on the pill. We should think about what we can do. Sports coaches can cope with that. We can put an ice pack on a sore knee or a hot-water bottle on a tummy while we are doing the team warm-up. It is a case of ensuring that people have all the tools available to help girls to manage their period symptoms.
11:00
Does anyone else on the panel want to come in?
I would like to add something about the importance of dynamics. When we talk about sport and being active, whether it is running a marathon or lifting weights, we are not just talking about sport. If we are to empower and encourage women, especially young girls who struggle with the mental and physical side of menstruation, we should not discourage them by not allowing them to participate. We need to create the right dynamic, which involves allowing milder exercises and having a substitute for activities so that women and girls are still included. They are still protecting themselves and doing something great, they are still being active and developing physical skills, but what is required if they are fit and are not bleeding is not relevant when they are bleeding. That way, women and girls can feel that they are fully active participants in activities.
We know from LBT women that being part of sport is a part of their bodily autonomy. Taking part in sport and using their bodies really helps them to find themselves and feel good about who they are.
I want to go back to the comments about kits and shorts. The issue goes beyond the colour of the shorts; it is much more about ensuring that participants and athletes can wear what they want to wear. I am sure that lots of people are aware that women’s football shirts are more fitted than men’s. The kit that teams are supposed to play in is just assigned to them. Women are supposed to play in shirts that are tighter and more fitted and shorts that are shorter than men’s shorts.
I recommend that people should be able to wear what they want to wear. In particular, we should ensure that non-binary and trans people have something that they can feel comfortable wearing. They can be more likely to wear clothes that are baggy and they may not want to wear specific colours. It is really about having the flexibility to do all of that within different sports and settings.
I want to emphasise something that Baz Moffat said about education. One of the things that came through strongly from the women in the focus groups for the menopause report was the importance for them of being educated about menopause. Baz Moffat made a point about life stages. If the women had known particular things before their experience of something, it would really have helped them during that experience. That particularly relates to women’s engagement in sport and physical activity, and to seeing that as a tool to support them through an experience.
Education is hugely important. I am talking about educating organisations and services to go beyond policy and think about how they can create inclusivity in their groups and be really intentional in the approaches that they take. A big part of that must involve understanding what it means. As my colleague Heidi Vistisen said, for someone who has experienced a particular barrier, things like a kit can really help to break down such barriers. We must educate beyond policy and look at really intentional practical application across the sport and physical activity communities.
Evelyn Tweed has a supplementary question on that.
Do we know whether coaches are being trained to understand how cycles or hormones impact performance? How are we helping young women and girls to understand the changes in their performance and why they happen? I saw Baz Moffat shaking her head there—perhaps Baz would like to come in.
Thank you, Evelyn. In summary, no, they are not. There is no education. People in this room might say, “Well, I know a coach who knows about it,” and there might well be coaches out there who are finding that information out for themselves, but there is no standard education. That is why we need to have it mandated that coaches understand the monthly hormonal cycle that females will be going through.
Only 6 per cent of sports science research is done exclusively on females. When you hear about an athlete pulling up or a footballer getting an anterior cruciate ligament injury, people will say, “There’s not enough research being done.” The issue with saying that not enough research is being done is that lots of people then think, “Oh well—there’s nothing we can do until we have the research.” The 6 per cent of research that is done exclusively on females, which covers everything to do with females—pelvic health, breast support, hormones, all the life stages that we go through and our injury risk—is a really small amount of research from which we can start doing stuff, but we are not even addressing that research at the moment. We are not even using the research that we have. Therefore, we could do a huge amount.
No one is told about menstrual cycles, and no one is told about female health. GPs do not have as much information about women who are going through the menopause. Brilliantly, that has changed recently, but it absolutely has not filtered down into the world of sport and exercise.
Along with the standard that we have produced for CIMSPA, we have produced four courses that are aligned with the female health stages. We have a course on the female body, a course on puberty, a course on prenatal and postnatal health, and a course on menopause. We truly believe that we can demedicalise women.
At the moment, female health is very much in the hands of experts, such as gynaecologists, women’s health doctors and academics who really, truly understand it. While we need those people—the brilliant minds that do all that fabulous work—we feel that everybody can cope with understanding female health on a level that is appropriate to the people and the populations that they are supporting. For example, a 50-year-old man who is coaching an under-14s women’s football team does not need to know about the technicalities of the sports bra or how to fit a sports bra, but he needs to know how he can have a conversation with his squad of 20 girls about why they need to be wearing a bra, and he needs to feel safe and appropriate having that conversation and not to feel as though he is putting himself at risk.
That is what we are attempting to do—to get that education in place. The majority of girls are coached by men, and the majority of fitness trainers and the majority of sports coaches are men, so we have to create education that everyone—including people who have not had lived experience—feels that they can access without putting themselves at risk or feeling that it might be inappropriate.
Emma Harper has a supplementary question.
Thank you, convener. Good morning to you all.
I will pick up on what Heidi Vistisen said about uniforms. In the previous session, I talked about the Norwegian handball team that got fined $1,500 because the players wore shorts instead of bikinis. Wow! They broke the rules because they wanted to wear something that was more comfortable. There was also the German gymnastics team whose members wore the full-length unitard because they did not want to wear what was prescribed as normal. One of the articles on sportanddev.org says:
“Recent conversations around women’s uniforms have highlighted the deep-rooted sexism that often prevails in the sporting field.”
My question for Heidi Vistisen, and possibly also Baz Moffat, is how important is it that we recognise that what women wear on the field for sports or physical activity needs to be their choice and not prescribed or mandated through a historical sexist approach?
Thank you, and good morning to you, too.
I talked earlier about the autonomy of being able to make your own choices and to decide what you want to wear. We see people coming out, who want to make choices for themselves about what they wear. We see the expression of their gender and the way in which they want to show who they are.
We have the idea that women must look feminine, or that a real woman looks feminine, and that we must therefore put them into uniforms, gymnastics outfits or bikinis that recognise that. All those decisions are made by sports governing bodies or competitions that are led by men. The inherently misogynistic and sexist nature of how sports have been set up and how they have been run for decades, or for hundreds of years, has filtered down to how people are expected to dress and behave. That is having a really detrimental impact on all women, and probably on all participants—especially on LGBTIQ participants, who often express their sexuality and gender in the way that they dress and present themselves. Prescribed ways of presenting themselves in sport have an impact on that.
I absolutely agree. There is a conversation to be had about team unity and the look for people who are involved with a team, but we need to give people options about what to wear for sport and activity.
Our next theme is LGBTQ+ participation, on which Tess White has a question.
I have a question for Heidi Vistisen. Women in Sport has highlighted that adult males have 40 to 50 per cent more upper body strength, 20 to 40 per cent more lower limb strength and 12kg more skeletal muscle mass than women. All of that has implications for trans inclusion in women’s sport, as sports councils and governing bodies are finding. How would you strike a balance between inclusion, fairness and safety in women’s sport?
I will highlight a couple of areas. I want to be completely clear. Having trans women participating and competing in sport has been presented as a threat to women’s sport, on the basis of some of the evidence that you have shared today.
I do not believe that there is any evidence that that is the case. Transgender athletes are not, and never have been, a threat to women’s sport. I do not know the exact evidence that you have shared, but we believe that trans women should be able to participate in sport. There are obviously some areas in which we would want to consider the evidence, and there might be areas where there should be restrictions on participation. However, we would not stand for any blanket exclusions or any bans on the participation of trans women in women’s categories.
You have not answered my question, Heidi. My question was about how you would strike a balance between inclusion, fairness and safety in women’s sport.
I would disagree that it is not possible to have that balance in what I have described. If you use the lawful measures that are already available to restrict access when necessary, that is how you strike a balance between fairness and inclusion. Transgender people will be able to participate where they want to, and any restrictions or policies that are already in place should be followed. That is how access can be provided.
You are still not really answering the question about how to strike a balance between inclusion, fairness and safety, but I will leave it there.
Thank you, Tess. It might be worth us picking that up separately, so that I can answer your question better, if that is all right.
11:15
How do we ensure that we support trans people—and non-binary people in particular, who are often lost in some of these conversations—to participate in sport and on-going physical activity? Much of our inquiry is about physical activity. Given the issues that we have seen with the way that trans people and non-binary people—who, as I have said, are often excluded from some of the narrative—are portrayed in the media, how do we allow spaces such as gyms and participative classes to be safe for them?
I am assuming that that question is directed at me, too.
Yes, please—sorry.
No, that is all right.
It is really important that we still see them just as other people. As we have heard from others today, we need to ensure that the voices of all our participants, and all the people who access our spaces, are heard. We need to ensure that we have in place the indicators to enable us to hear from people, and to ask, “What is it you need?” and “Why are you not participating in this area?”
We hear about young women and girls who stop participating, with a higher drop-out rate than the rate for boys at the age of 14. It is the exact same situation here; we ask, and we figure out what is happening, what kinds of barriers those people are meeting and what we can do to support them.
As for specific things, we would be talking about kit and uniforms, and making sure that there were spaces in changing villages to enable people to change in a safe space, and spaces where people could interact in that sense.
That is great.
It comes back to the whole intersectionality conversation. Scottish Disability Sport has an inclusion model that can be used for anybody; it is participant centred, and it is about listening to people and bringing to the table all the ingredients that they need to enable them to participate in physical activity and sport.
We also have a regional team that provides bespoke support. With anyone who wanted to take part in physical activity or sport, or who came to us through a physiotherapist referral, no matter what their background—their socioeconomic background, whether they were gay or from an ethnically diverse background, or whether they had poor mental health—we would work with them individually to support them into an opportunity of their choice. If the issue of changing places was a consideration, that would need to be looked at. If it was about equipment or kit, our regional manager would provide that bespoke support.
I think that we all see, across the board, that it is about taking a participant-centred approach and looking at the issues through an intersectionality lens instead of simply looking at different protected characteristics in individual silos, because we do not want to get into some kind of pecking order situation, or a bun fight over status, or whatever. We simply use our activity inclusion model.
When it comes to competition, other considerations come into play, but with general participation, it is all about having a participant-centred approach and using the model to bring to the table whatever an individual needs to enable them to access physical activity and sport, and to remove the barriers.
I agree with everything that Lynne Glen said about ensuring that we try to get everyone involved in sport, because we know that it helps with mental health and so many other things. Stigma can put a barrier in the way of people from the LGBTQ+ community wanting to participate in sport.
I turn to Heidi Vistisen. Heidi, I have some direct questions in response to your answers to Tess White. In one of those responses, you used the phrase “when necessary”. When is it necessary?
You will have seen the guidance around gender-affected sport—I am just assuming that you will be aware of UK Sport’s guidance. We are under no illusion that there might be competitions and sports where restrictions will be needed. However, we would always say that sports governing bodies should apply those restrictions based on the evidence available, and they should be based on actual information and research that would ensure that the impact is considered.
Can I just pause you there? My question was about the phrase “when necessary”, which you used in response to Tess White. Can you give me some specific examples of when this is necessary?
I am afraid that I cannot, because I cannot give you any specific examples of specific sports. I apologise—I might have been broad-stroking in my answer; what I meant was that we need to ensure that we do not just blanket ban trans women from a sport, but that we potentially put in restrictions or supportive measures that mean that someone is able to participate if they are able to meet specific levels of testosterone, for example. I should say, though, that I do not think that that is always necessarily the best measurement.
I apologise if I used language that was not completely clear. I am not able to go into specifics about where restrictions would be necessary, but I believe that, to support inclusion and highlight the participation of specific trans women or specific people, it would be useful to have supportive guidance and measures in place.
Okay. Let us look at someone who wants to train to be a runner or an athlete, for example. There should be no barriers to training, but when it comes to the competing side, World Athletics has said that trans people cannot compete in women’s categories. Is that an example of where the governing body has said something that needs to be put into place at the more junior levels?
Unfortunately, we are seeing the trickle-down effect of policies that are being put in place at the world level or a competition level. However, for many governing bodies—for example, Scottish Athletics or UK Athletics—that does not necessarily mean that the home nation needs to follow the exact policy. They can still put in place their own policies.
That said, because of the focus on the issue at the moment, there is a worry that individual grass-roots sports at the competition levels in individual countries are being influenced by the policies that are coming on to the world stage. I do not believe that competition levels will be directly affected because of a World Athletics rule set, unless it is put into restrictions or rules in Scotland.
My final question is about participation in sport for everyone, whatever level they play at. If I want to play squash, I want to play against somebody who is at my level, and I want the playing field to be level in everything that we do, because sport is inherently not fair. There are categories in everything. Do you feel—I suppose that you could give your personal opinion or LEAP Sports Scotland’s opinion—that trans athletes have an unfair advantage in participating in competition compared with biological women?
No, I do not.
Thank you.
We will move to our next theme, which is ethnicity and religion.
What I am going to ask is similar to what I asked earlier, and I will also come on to uniforms.
What are the particular challenges facing women and girls from ethnic minority groups in participating in sport? Obviously, there are real challenges; it is quite apparent from some of the statistics that have come out that ethnic minority girls and women do not have the opportunity to participate or even engage.
I will go to Ewelina Chin first.
When we work with females from ethnic minorities, we definitely need to understand their culture. We need to understand their religion and respect what is linked to who they are.
As for sporting activities, we often hear the very upset voices of younger girls, who will say that having a hijab or scarf might affect their participation. However, they are okay with it. What is not acceptable is the response from their peers and coaches, who try to encourage them but do not understand that such factors are a part of their being. We need to understand that we cannot change someone’s existence or values, because of the needs of a sporting activity.
On changing rooms and same-sex activities, as much as we support transgender women and provide therapy for them, we need to follow the needs and requirements of other communities—for example, those of the Muslim community, where being transgender is a taboo. It is hard to understand, but that does not mean that there is a lack of respect or acceptance. In sport and physical activity, our main clients are Pakistani girls, who really need to be safe, to take part in same-sex activity and to have the opportunity to be surrounded by women only. It is crucial for them to be heard and for their beliefs to be accommodated, too.
By other ethnic minorities, I mean not only Muslim or Arabic communities but the eastern European community, which looks differently at engaging in sport. I am Polish, and my belief is that being a woman involves a kind of dignity that I would like to protect. I would not really feel free if I did not have the opportunity to use all-female toilets. That is a basic human need, but I would like it to be heard and understood.
I love everyone—all human beings—and I am happy to offer support to anyone who needs it. However, ethnic minority women need to be heard, too, and their rights, religions and beliefs should not be violated just because we are pushing a general agenda. It is hard to find a gold-standard solution for everyone, but I believe that by providing person-centred approaches we will arrive at good solutions.
In response to your question, we worked with our partners Scottish Athletics and jogscotland to create a project called “Community strides”, which aimed not only to increase participation by people from ethnically and culturally diverse communities, but to blend in mental health awareness, because of the massive stigma that we knew was around mental health issues there.
Through our work with community champions and leaders of culturally and ethnically diverse communities, we identified religion as a major influence. Beliefs about clothes and how they are worn—for example, having to wear short-sleeved clothes to take part in sport or physical activity—were big issues that we had to address. However, we were lucky; hearing the voices of the people from those communities helped us to work with others to obtain sports clothing that covered people’s arms and legs, which then meant that women could participate.
Even the environment was a factor. We had to consider having a closed environment, because the idea of people watching was a great barrier. One of the best solutions involved having community leaders and champions coming in to help to influence and shape our approaches. We must do much more of that kind of work, in which the co-design and co-production of projects involve people who recognise such barriers, so that we can find solutions that lead to participants being far more engaged.
I will give you an example of that, involving a group of about 12 women. As a result of there being a champion in that group and the other women taking part in those activities, they went on to join jogscotland networks. They joined their local group, because barriers had been broken down. They felt included, they were involved in the whole design and they were involved when they went elsewhere. That was really important—it is so important to listen to people’s voices and to recognise all those aspects.
11:30
You spoke about the environment and the ability to participate without others watching. There is a women-only gym in Dumfries, for example—I hear amazing music when I walk past with my dogs. Today, we are talking about how we encourage women and girls to participate in sport. Part of that is about recognising the need to be able to participate in a safe place, without fear of being judged or someone criticising you for wearing a hijab for instance. We know that it is easier to buy sports hijabs now. Is getting the rock music on and having women-only gyms part of how we make progress towards greater awareness and acceptance of women from ethnic minorities participating in sport?
The reality is that you can have a fantastic venue with fantastic equipment and individuals in it, but you must reach out to people to help them to reach in. You have to listen to people and hear from them what will support them to go to a particular place.
We talk about three areas in relation to an environment and its culture. First, it must be safe. Secondly, it must be secure, and in a way that recognises people’s points—for example, we covered windows, which meant that people felt safe in that it space. Thirdly, it must be supported.
As my colleagues on the panel, including Baz Moffat, have mentioned, if we educate and help people to understand ways in which they can bring those environments alive and support them in doing that, we will see more people engage, because their voice has been heard. They will come to those spaces that have been designed and developed on the basis of all those considerations.
It is also about choice in how people can engage, participate and achieve in that space.
As you mentioned, when we think about some communities, especially a Muslim one, the girls cannot do sport because of stigma.
In Stirling, we have an extremely busy roller-skating group. Every session is fully booked, and there are between 20 and 30 young people skating. You would not believe how great it is. How did that happen? We heard people’s voices and about the need to organise such a group.
We provide walking therapy—it is a walking support group. That is a beautiful act of inclusion. It is not a sport-heavy activity; it is the promotion of healthy lifestyles. Sometimes, we have groups of three women; at other times, there are 14. We go for a walk, and do breathing and grounding exercises. Sometimes, the 14 women in attendance are from 14 different countries.
We can bring a lot of opportunities by listening to the voices of people as Robert Nesbitt said.
Inclusion is a great way to tackle racism.
Definitely.
We know that, when we live and work in the same communities, we learn from each other. What specific things could be implemented to tackle racism in sport, whether that is related to religion or to the fact that some people do not understand certain cultures?
Not long ago, the Scottish Government was looking at its hate crime strategy. That was a great time, and very meaningful documents were created. However, there is still a lack of understanding about what a hate crime is. Maybe we could start by raising the issue of otherness, because it is not only verbal abuse that falls into the category of hate; it is not only the physical violence that creates hate. Talking about otherness and bringing knowledge of that as part of education, as well as understanding what a hate crime is, helps us to understand all aspects of racism. That shows the importance of learning about other cultures and their religions.
What everybody is saying is absolutely spot on. We need places for people to go and participate in sport, and especially for smaller groups to take part. As you will be aware, there is a leisure facility crisis going on at the moment. We need places for people to play sport, and we never get massive numbers, but sometimes there are no places. If programmes do not wash their faces to begin with, they are not allowed to grow and develop, and we do not hear people’s voices. That is where we are facing great challenges at the moment.
We cannot find facilities for people to go and participate in sport, and that situation will get worse because of the current challenges for leisure facilities, which we can understand. As a result, wider health inequalities are developing. People with disabilities and other groups have been the hardest hit by Covid. There is a direct correlation between people with disabilities, affordability and employability. That links back to people from ethnically diverse backgrounds, too, because employability is a challenge, so affordability comes into it. Muslim women and men were hardest hit with Covid, as well.
Health inequalities are becoming greater. We need places for people to go and participate in sport, and we are finding challenges with that. We need to make everybody in the room aware that, if we do not do something about it, health inequalities will become greater and greater. It is just a plea for income. You might get two or three women with disabilities who want to go on a programme together, but that will be cut short because the facilities are not washing their face. It is a barrier.
I would like a one-word answer to my first question, if that is okay, and I might just go down the line of witnesses. Do you hold data on the ethnicity of people who participate in sport in your organisation?
Not across the board.
I assume, Robert Nesbitt, that you do not have that data.
It would depend on the programme that we were delivering and on whether it was part of the processes and evaluation that we were doing. We have elements of that in the work that we do.
Yes, we do.
We do.
I have asked many different people—from elite sport through to other areas—that same question and, invariably, the answer is that they do not hold records. Your group is exceptional, Lynne. If we do not know the ethnicity of the women who are participating in sport, how can we know how to do better?
Gathering basic information is key for providing the right response. An intake assessment process is part of our work. Through that, we gather basic information to provide a safe service. Getting to know someone’s ethnicity is an integral part of a trauma-sensitive and person-centred approach. We do not only offer free counselling in 26 languages; we follow people’s individual needs. Not only does the intake assessment give us information about family status, social inclusion and ethnicity but it identifies individual needs.
After the process of providing the service—no matter whether the person needs advocacy, befriending, counselling therapy or walking therapy—we follow up to get feedback. The feedback provides solid evidence of how well we did and how the service has made an impact on each person. When we look at the statistics by ethnicity—Ukrainian ladies, for instance—we can clearly identify which kind of activity works the best and which service is the most appropriate for certain groups. Therefore, I believe that gathering basic information should be a part of the work of every organisation.
Absolutely. I highlight something that you said earlier: that the culture is different. You highlighted Ukrainian women and Muslim women, but we are also talking about different types of Muslim women. All the different ethnic groups are different, and the data that you collect will help you.
There are two big things about which I would like to ask. First, how do we encourage more ethnic minority women into just doing some sport, whether that be the gym or participation? Secondly, how do we get those women to be elite? Lynne, because your organisation has the data, I ask you to comment first.
Sure. It goes back to listening to the voice; it goes back to the opportunity; and it is about that supported and participant-centred approach, working in partnership with the agencies so that we can increase the reach. It goes back to the imagery, the language and the relatable opportunity—for example, whether the gym is a women-only one. The biggest thing is that it has to be fun and it has to be social. That has been missed from the conversation today.
It is also about the opportunity for people to dip their toe into a club or an appropriate competition. In disability sport, we support people to access competition and opportunity. We have some good examples of work with Scottish Swimming and Scottish Athletics in female-only camps. We bring people together, and peer support comes from that. There is also an element of rivalry when it comes to progressing in the sport.
For me, it is about partnership working and a participant-centred approach—listening to the individual and putting in place what they need in order to progress.
There is a variety of things in what is a complex landscape. As we have said, we have to understand the needs of particular groups and how to engage with those.
We need to start young. Sometimes, we have to react to situations because we have become aware of a need and we respond to it. We need to start focusing on being much more preventative and more proactive at earlier stages.
Another aspect is about recognising the need in particular groups and the barriers to participation for them. We cannot take a blanket approach. We have to be very specific with particular groups—to see where their need is and to respond to that appropriately.
As part of that, we have to empower young women to see themselves in particular places. That is important because, in our research and in the feedback that we have received from women, that sense of impact and of self-belief, self-confidence and self-worth are huge markers. The stigma that is associated with women’s mental health, and the experience of that, are barriers that are preventing women, including young women, from seeing themselves in particular places. If we are to empower them, we have to think earlier about being proactive, about the language that is used, and about how we create inclusive environments that are beyond just a policy that is intentional in approach, as I said earlier. As others on the panel have said, how we educate, how we connect, and how we have our programmes designed by the people that we are trying to support—in this case, women, including young women—has to be a big player in that.
Earlier, the idea of role models was spoken about. We have to shine a light on role models that people can relate to and see, and help them to understand not just what their story is but how they then got to where they are, so that more women, including young women, can see themselves in that place as well.
It is a complex area, but work is going on. We continue to need to enhance and grow that work and to involve people in that space.
I just want to go back to data, for a second. That was a great question, and I thank Sandesh Gulhane for highlighting it. I want to clarify that it is not that we do not care about such data. That is not why we do not collect it. We collect it when it is relevant. We come from a place of trust. We work with people who are not out in their sport setting or who are not out to the people around them. They might have shared their sexuality but not their gender identity. We do not always want to ask lots of questions for the sake of—
Is someone’s ethnicity not already out there?
11:45
What I am saying is that we do not necessarily always ask questions that are important for that specific work. As you said, someone’s ethnicity is often already out there, so it is not always important for us to ask about it straight away in relation to our delivery.
My point is that it is not always the responsibility of third sector organisations to have all the relevant data. Of course, it is important for us to ask questions, and we use that information for lots of different work that we do. For example, we are just starting a project relating to LGBTIQ refugees and asylum seekers, and it is very important for us to know a bit more detail about the background of the people who participate. However, it is not always important to get such information from someone who joins a volleyball session on a Monday night. They do not need to give us lots of information—it is sometimes enough just to get their first name and contact details. There are therefore some instances in which it would not be relevant to ask someone for lots of information about their demographic and characteristics.
However, there needs to be more onus on governing bodies such as sportscotland to have that data. We should ensure that they ask such questions so that they can record the participation levels of different groups. That would allow us to benchmark against the percentage of people who take part in our groups and in others.
We also—
I am sorry, but Emma Harper wants to ask a brief supplementary question that might tie in with what has been said.
My question might tie in with what Heidi Vistisen said about data. The Scottish Government has data from the active Scotland outcomes indicator equality analysis. It is very complicated. The data shows that 77,000 people in Scotland describe their religion as Muslim and that there are 16,000 Hindus, 13,000 Buddhists and 15,000 from other religions. I will not go on but, when all those groups are combined, they still account for less than 3 per cent of the overall population. It is difficult to take apart all the aggregate data.
Heidi Vistisen talked about the need to engage with and develop folk at the grass-roots level. Is getting in about communities and supporting people to participate in whatever sport they choose what is important?
Safeguarding must be the first consideration when providing services for female survivors of trauma. Especially if we are focusing on women from ethnic minorities, if we are to work in partnership, we need to ensure that we share information about partner organisations that are safe for our beneficiaries. Transparency and the detailed gathering of basic information are vital to the credibility of us all, to trust and to the recognition and quality of services. The statistic of 3 per cent was mentioned. I believe that the percentage might be higher if more information could be gathered. I hope that that makes sense.
Sportscotland is starting to gather information on equalities statistics. That includes information on ethnicity. We are trying to do better in that area. We are working with someone from Lifestreams Consultancy, and we are gradually working our way around our 14 member branches. It is about educating the volunteers in our branches about different cultures and how we can better engage with different groups across the country. That involves making connections with local groups such as housing associations, which are sometimes the one-stop shop for lots of different communities. I just want to make the committee aware that we are trying to make a difference in that regard.
We are getting a bit tight for time and we have two more themes to cover, so I ask people to keep their questions and answers short, please.
My question is linked and is about socioeconomic factors and deprivation. Lynne Glen’s points were well made. Do you or other panel members want to highlight anything that we can consider when we think about how to help?
We know about the natural correlation between disability and poverty—47 per cent of households that are living in poverty have someone with a disability living in them. For us, school is crucial in accessing kids. To go back to Gillian Mackay’s earlier point, how do we reach different groups and not just wheelchair users? We must work in partnership with education and use the activity inclusion model to bring to the table what an individual needs, which sometimes means finding equipment or accessing funds so that a person can access physical activity and sport.
Is there anything that is particular to women and girls, or is the issue more general? Do some socioeconomic factors specifically affect women and girls?
There are issues with benefits. Also, for females who have left school—we know that the drop-off in participation starts at 14—one thing is affordability for a female who has responsibilities, and another thing is that opportunities to get back into physical activity and sport are not always there for women with disabilities. Affordability comes into the question, too.
Women who reside in rural places and places that are more deprived experience a massive restriction not only because of finances but because of public transport. Ladies are often scared about their safety or are unable to access transport. No accessibility is provided in rural places.
We work with women in Easterhouse in Glasgow. We have just had a conversation about the subject and the vast majority of the women said that they do not participate in any sport activities. They do not allow their girls to participate in sport activities, because that would require them to use public transport, which is not the safest after dark. Most classes are held in the evening. That is not an issue in the summer, but the summer does not last for long, so a class at 6, 7 or 8 pm for a mother or a child is unacceptable, because the risk is too high. I have no idea, but maybe ensuring safety on transportation and gathering people together at a community level could raise participation levels in sport activities a bit.
That is helpful—thank you.
Women whom we spoke to highlighted three factors that are significant to poverty and barriers. One was the lack of affordable childcare that was available at a time to enable women to engage in sport and physical activity. Another was the affordability of sports equipment and memberships for clubs and gyms, which was a big area. Transport—particularly its safety—was another factor. Women lead busy lives and are looking after children; when they have to get public transport, it needs to be available and safe, which means that it is difficult for women to participate in physical activity and sports at certain times. There is a correlation between poverty and those areas.
Care provision is a huge factor for women with disabilities; we know the challenges that health and social care partnerships across the country are facing. That provision is vital to enabling women and children to access physical activity and sport.
I will be quick. I will pick up on what Lynne Glen and Robert Nesbitt said about starting early and talk about the gender play gap from the age of five between girls and boys. Girls move a lot less than boys do, and they do not learn how to move their bodies in time and space. If we look at a playground, we see that girls are not doing rough and tumble play, running, landing or throwing, so they are less physically mature in their ability to move. If girls’ bodies do not feel good when they are moving, and they then go into puberty and their bodies get longer and lankier and they feel even worse when they move, that exacerbates the gender gap.
We must make sure that, in the school setting, we are specifically and intentionally teaching girls how to move their bodies well, so that they enjoy movement and have much more desire to learn a sport. I know that there is a lot of socioeconomic stuff layered on top of that, but we can do a much better job in schools to teach and coach movement patterns.
We move to our final theme of looking to the future.
North Lanarkshire Council is taking a community approach and is looking at having community hubs that are located alongside schools or early learning and childcare settings, or, possibly, libraries and cafes, as a way of keeping mums there, bringing them in and getting them involved in new activities that are based on their interests.
Ewelina Chin mentioned developing a roller-skating session that grew out of people’s interests. At one of our previous meetings, Rudi Urbach from Scottish Rugby talked about changing the rules of the game to suit women and what they want to do. Is that something that should start in schools? How do we stop women and girls—particularly those who are affected by other inequalities—dropping out of sport early in secondary school?
We learn most when we are children and are like sponges. If we focus on the youngest girls and take the right approach, and if our coaches are the walking evidence of what we are talking about and are well trained and fully aware of the importance and benefits of girls’ participation in sport, I believe that it will be far easier for young people to participate happily. When people are passionate about something, it is hard for them to give up after a first mistake.
The approach is very important. If sport is not mandatory, and if we show people that it is not something that they have to do but something that they might love, we can give girls time to find out whether they like it. Robert Nesbitt and Lynne Glen mentioned listening, which should happen not only prior to providing the opportunity. The opportunity should be given, and people should be allowed to withdraw without consequences. Nothing fits everyone, but a trial period can sometimes be great. I love taster sessions, because they let me find out whether I like something.
Young girls can have different expectations. They might join an activity but not find it enjoyable, or it might not be what they would like it to be. They feel guilty and embarrassed and they do not feel comfortable about sharing feedback. We should ease the pressure and should bring some excitement or passion. It is key to have passionate well-qualified people.
I have another question for you, and maybe others could also come in. It is great to hear you talking about fun and enjoyment, because that is where it all starts and that is where motivation comes from.
We have focused quite a lot on sport, but healthy activity outwith sport is incredibly important too. In Vienna, all government agencies are required to have strategic plans and initiatives for equitable policy and there is a gender mainstreaming model. The research has found that girls who are aged nine and upwards barely use parks. That model has been adopted in many other countries, including in Berlin, Barcelona, Stockholm and Copenhagen. Do you think that Scotland should consider having a similar holistic model that focuses on gender alongside race, disability, mental health and other issues? I am happy for you to answer that and to open to anyone else.
12:00
I do not believe that exclusion should be part of building diverse and equal communities. Using a holistic approach has a special power to reduce instances of a lack of understanding, so providing equal approaches is important. I believe that it is about creating an inclusive community. If there is a voice for full inclusion, of course I would say, “Why not?” However, if importance is placed on creating a sub-community that may not find everything comfortable, it is worth listening to that community. Nevertheless, a holistic approach is a great tool.
I will go back to your earlier point about keeping people involved, which is about education. We know that it is policy for everyone to be included in PE, but does it happen in practice? Unfortunately, we still hear about instances where that does not happen for people who have disabilities.
To answer Stephanie Callaghan’s second question, I think that we need to work across sectors: we do not need to look at sport only but should include health, education, local authorities, trusts and third sector organisations. To achieve Scottish Disability Sport’s vision of—to paraphrase—a welcoming and inclusive Scottish sporting society, we need to work across all sectors and we need education across them. We also need policy and strategy to back that up.
I am mindful that we do not have much time left. We tend to design for the default male, because of who is in position. I am interested in the fact that the countries that I mentioned have a gender mainstreaming policy, which means that all government departments have to use it in their strategic plans. Wider inequalities also need to be included. Is that something that you think we should be focusing on, and could it be helpful?
Yes. If something is not in policy or in strategy, it gets lost in operational plans. The resource will not come in to back it up and make things happen.
We have to have a holistic and comprehensive approach. Sport England said that, in order for organisations to get funding, they needed to work towards having 30 per cent female representation on their boards. Now, all governing bodies that receive funding from Sport England have 30 per cent female representation on their boards.
The same happened in the field of research. In America, they said that organisations would not get any research money unless they were studying females as well as males. Suddenly, everyone is studying females alongside males—whereas before, everyone said, “It is too complicated to study females. We will just apply what we have learned from the male population to the female population.”
There is no one fix. We have talked about kit, facilities and education—we have to look at all of it as a systemic change and look at sports and exercise from participation through to the podium and performance through what we call the “female filter”. That should be applied to all aspects of the work, and we should not just think that there is only one thing that we can do. Without a doubt, to my mind we need to be holistic and comprehensive. We need to mandate things, as well as do the little things. We also need to consider a carrot and stick approach.
Before we finish up, Tess White has a brief supplementary on one of the issues that we discussed earlier.
Baz Moffat touched on the subject of boards and we have explored the importance of having role models—females, people with disabilities or people from the black, Asian and minority ethnic group—as well as the importance of data. You said that most coaches are men. In your view, how do we shift the dial on that so that we have leaders and coaches from a wider cross-section of people, including more women, people from the BAME community and those with disabilities?
It is really hard being a coach, because it generally involves weekends and evenings. If someone has caring responsibilities, that is often when they will be caring for the people for whom they are responsible, and those with such responsibilities are predominantly female. We have to look at how we support our workforce as well as encouraging girls and women to do more sport and physical activity.
We are working with governing bodies to ensure that there are menopause policies in place and that we are creating supportive networks for females. It is not just about giving them the leadership programmes but about creating environments in which it is not expected that they will need to stick to a rigid sporting structure—for example, “You have to train on a Tuesday night and on a Saturday morning, and you have to commit to do everything.” It is about taking a much more flexible approach to ensure that we have more female volunteers and coaches supporting girls and women.
Given everything that you have talked about around participation and getting women into sport, how much of a role do social media play in stopping them?
There is a reason that I highlight that. For example, we might think about the rise in women’s football. Every image that we see on social media such as TikTok, which every young woman uses, is not the kind of image that you are talking just now about portraying in order to encourage women into sport. I could name one Aston Villa player who is always on TikTok, and even the equipment that these players are wearing, such as £250 Predator football boots, are things that young girls in areas of deprivation are simply not able to afford. How much do social media play a role in discouraging women from going into sport?
I think that social media will always play a part on some level. It goes back to some of the solutions that the panel has been reflecting on. It is important to look at who the role models are and whether they recognise the need to ensure that they do not play a further part in driving the inequality gaps across our communities.
Those aspects are significant. We have to be able to tell different stories alongside those stories, because some of those social media images encourage other young women to take part. They see those images and they have a dream and a hope, so we need to nourish and empower them in that.
We need to work with role models to look at the messaging on social media and how that comes across. We also need to recognise—to take your point about £250 boots, for example—that others might experience those images differently.
We need to look where we take imagery from. We recently worked with Public Health Scotland on a campaign with sportscotland, and one of the things that we looked at was imagery. We looked at photos in areas across the country that represented different places where people lived. We made a decision to do that. There is an opportunity for us to find real solutions where we can share imagery that is representative of the diversity of Scotland, and which represents different groups across our country.
I have one final question, because we did not quite cover this when we talked earlier about LGBTQ+ participation in sport. My question is specifically for Heidi Vistisen.
Do you think that sport and physical activity are welcoming for lesbian women and bi women? How do we ensure that they feel included in a sports and physical activity environment?
I really want to say yes, they feel really welcome and included. However, that is not always what we hear. We hear that about half of lesbian women are not out in the sport that they play, and we also hear—I want to make sure that I get this right—that only a quarter of bisexual women are out in the sport that they play; that is actually not very many.
The reason for that is simply the stereotypes that come alongside being out in sport, and the idea that you must be a lesbian if you take part in specific sports. We hear from women in the groups that we work with that they were not out when they were younger because they did not want to be branded a lesbian. They were worried that people would assume what their sexuality was or that it was because they had been turned: that if they joined their team knowing that there were lesbians in it, they would also become a lesbian. There are some clear barriers in the stereotypes that follow physically active women in that sense, and that does not just affect lesbians and bisexual women; it potentially also affects those who are on the teams of those women.
I want to go back to some of the comments about how we can get more women to be coaches or be in those sorts of roles. We have heard about that from some of the people we work with. There is a woman who is a football coach for young girls and she wants to do the job really well because she is aware that there are not many like her. She is a woman with a diverse sexuality. She does not necessarily want people to know that she has a sexual orientation that is not straight. However, the girls keep asking about it, and she is getting complaints from parents, who are saying, “You don’t need to shove your sexuality down our girls’ throats. They’re already at danger of becoming a lesbian for taking part in football.”
Those sorts of instances are not going to make women more likely to become a coach. If they already feel that they cannot be out in the sports that they play, why would they ever become a coach? Their whole life would be centred around those sorts of stereotypes, and escaping those can be challenging.
There is definitely something about the media, social media and the imagery that we use around the people who are coaching. The majority of women’s football is coached by men. We see great women leaders who are doing it, but there is definitely a lot of work to be done on the inclusion of LBTI women in that space.
I thank you all, including Baz Moffat, who is online. You have made a very valuable contribution to the committee’s inquiry.
You can leave as we continue our meeting—you do not need to wait.
At our meeting next week, we will continue our inquiry into female participation in sport and physical activity and undertake further scrutiny of NHS boards.
That concludes the public part of the meeting.
12:12 Meeting continued in private until 12:40.